A church steeple in Brandon, Florida, on ...
Conservative leaders are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done in the final weeks before the midterm elections to educate and mobilize White evangelicals, a critical voting bloc in the president’s coalition. Republicans fear if they stay home, that could hand victories to Democrats in key races across the country with control of Congress at stake.
“I am not aware of any party machine that is at work right now to turn out evangelical voters,” one conservative evangelical pastor in Texas told CNN on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the risks for Republicans in the election. “Maybe they are assuming they are going to show up, but that is a dangerous assumption.”
There’s little evidence national Republicans are doing much through their campaign committees to specifically target and mobilize the evangelical vote. Instead, grassroots mobilization is falling largely to individual churches and groups like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which announced a get-out-the-vote operation aimed at turning out “drop-off voters” — evangelicals who vote in presidential elections but don’t always show up in the midterms.
At the same time, Democrats are mounting their own efforts to win over White Christian voters, making the argument that their party and priorities are aligned with faith-based values and recruiting candidates, including pastors, whose religion is a key part of their identity.
Turning out the White evangelical vote will be critical to Republicans’ success in key races across the South, from Texas to Georgia to Kansas and even places like South Carolina, where the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, is facing off against Democrat Annie Andrews, who has mounted a more competitive campaign than Republicans expected.
In 2016, 2020 and 2024, roughly 8 in 10 White evangelicals cast ballots for President Donald Trump nationally. While they make up only 13% of the country’s population, they vote in such large numbers that they often account for roughly 20% of the electorate in any given election, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
“The evangelical vote is Trump’s strongest coalition. Thirty-eight percent of his voters were White evangelicals. [Republicans] cannot win — I don’t care where you are in the country — without the evangelical vote,” said Ryan Burge, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.
But at a moment when gas and grocery prices are high, the president’s approval rating is underwater, and enthusiasm among Republicans is tepid, the 2026 election could be a critical test of whether White evangelicals still have enough faith in the GOP to turn out in full force on Election Day.
Conservative leaders are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done in the final weeks before the midterm elections to educate and mobilize White evangelicals, a critical voting bloc in the president’s coalition. Republicans fear if they stay home, that could hand victories to Democrats in key races across the country with control of Congress at stake.
“I am not aware of any party machine that is at work right now to turn out evangelical voters,” one conservative evangelical pastor in Texas told CNN on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the risks for Republicans in the election. “Maybe they are assuming they are going to show up, but that is a dangerous assumption.”
There’s little evidence national Republicans are doing much through their campaign committees to specifically target and mobilize the evangelical vote. Instead, grassroots mobilization is falling largely to individual churches and groups like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which announced a get-out-the-vote operation aimed at turning out “drop-off voters” — evangelicals who vote in presidential elections but don’t always show up in the midterms.
At the same time, Democrats are mounting their own efforts to win over White Christian voters, making the argument that their party and priorities are aligned with faith-based values and recruiting candidates, including pastors, whose religion is a key part of their identity.
Turning out the White evangelical vote will be critical to Republicans’ success in key races across the South, from Texas to Georgia to Kansas and even places like South Carolina, where the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, is facing off against Democrat Annie Andrews, who has mounted a more competitive campaign than Republicans expected.
In 2016, 2020 and 2024, roughly 8 in 10 White evangelicals cast ballots for President Donald Trump nationally. While they make up only 13% of the country’s population, they vote in such large numbers that they often account for roughly 20% of the electorate in any given election, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
“The evangelical vote is Trump’s strongest coalition. Thirty-eight percent of his voters were White evangelicals. [Republicans] cannot win — I don’t care where you are in the country — without the evangelical vote,” said Ryan Burge, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.
But at a moment when gas and grocery prices are high, the president’s approval rating is underwater, and enthusiasm among Republicans is tepid, the 2026 election could be a critical test of whether White evangelicals still have enough faith in the GOP to turn out in full force on Election Day.
.jfif)
